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Tag: Project Nimbus

  • Google and Amazon’s Israeli cloud contracts reportedly require them to sidestep legal orders

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    Chalk this one up under “The most clever (alleged) legal sidesteps this side of Tony Soprano.” On Wednesday, The Guardian published a report about a so-called “winking mechanism” regarding Israeli cloud computing contracts with Amazon and Google. The stipulation from 2021’s Project Nimbus is said to require the US companies to send coded messages to Israel. According to the report, whenever Google or Amazon secretly complies with an overseas legal request for Israeli data, they’re required to send money to Israel. The dollar amount indicates which country issued the request.

    The coding system reportedly involves country dialing prefixes. For example, if Google or Amazon hand over Israeli data to the US (dialing code +1), they would send Israel 1,000 shekels. For Italy (code +39), they would send 3,900 shekels. (Out of morbid curiosity, I discovered that the highest dialing code is Uzbekistan’s +998.) There’s reportedly even a failsafe: If a gag order prevents the companies from using the standard signal, they can notify Israel by sending 100,000 shekels.

    The Guardian says Microsoft, which bid for the Nimbus contract, lost out in part because it refused to accept some of Israel’s terms.

    In a statement to Engadget, an Amazon spokesperson highlighted customer privacy. “We respect the privacy of our customers, and we do not discuss our relationship without their consent, or have visibility into their workloads,” they wrote.

    The Amazon spokesperson denied that the company has any underhanded workarounds in place. “We have a rigorous global process for responding to lawful and binding orders for requests related to customer data,” they said. “[Amazon Web Services] carefully reviews each request to assess any non-disclosure obligations, and we maintain confidentiality in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. While AWS does not disclose customer information in response to government demands unless we’re absolutely required to do so, we recognize the legitimate needs of law enforcement agencies to investigate serious crimes. We do not have any processes in place to circumvent our confidentiality obligations on lawfully binding orders.”

    Google also denied any wrongdoing. “The accusations in this reporting are false, and imply that we somehow were involved in illegal activity, which is absurd,” a company spokesperson said. “As is common in public sector agreements, an RFP does not reflect a final contract. The idea that we would evade our legal obligations to the US government as a US company, or in any other country, is categorically wrong.”

    “We’ve been very clear about the Nimbus contract, what it’s directed to, and the Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy that govern it,” the Google spokesperson continued. “Nothing has changed. This appears to be yet another attempt to falsely imply otherwise.”

    We also reached out to the Israeli government for a statement, and we’ll update this story if we hear back. The Guardian’s full report has much more detail on the alleged leak.

    Update, October 29, 2025, 6:29 PM ET: This story has been updated to add a statement from a Google spokesperson.

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    Will Shanklin

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  • Google Fires 28 Workers Who Protested its Contracts With Israel

    Google Fires 28 Workers Who Protested its Contracts With Israel

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    Google says it terminated 28 employees associated with protests of the company’s $1.2 billion cloud computing contracts with the Israeli government on Wednesday. The firings follow the arrests of nine Google employees for trespassing in the company’s New York and California offices on Tuesday during an hours-long sit-in protest.

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    “A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations,” said a Google spokesperson in an emailed statement to Gizmodo. “We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as needed.”

    Google claims these protests impeded other employees’ work and prevented them from accessing facilities. No Tech for Apartheid tells Gizmodo that 19 of the employees fired on Wednesday did not directly participate in the sit-in protests, but were associated with the movement.

    “This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” said a No Tech for Apartheid spokesperson in an emailed statement. “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor.”

    In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, shared by The Verge, Google’s head of global security, Chris Rackow, said “behavior like this has no place in our workplace.” The memo also claims the protestors defaced Google’s property and “made coworkers feel threatened.” Rackow concludes his message by telling employees to “think again” if they expect Google to overlook conduct that violates its policies.

    A Google spokesperson tells Gizmodo the cloud computing contracts at the center of these protests, Project Nimbus, are not directed at highly sensitive military workloads related to weapons or intelligence services. However, Time reported last week that Google provides cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The report claims the tech giant has recently negotiated a deeper partnership with Israel during the war in Gaza.

    These 28 workers are not the first Google employees to be fired for protesting the company’s contracts with Israel. They join Eddie Hatfield, a Google software-engineer who was fired after disrupting an Israeli tech conference by yelling, “No tech for apartheid!” while a Google executive was speaking.

    There’s some discrepancy over why these workers were fired. Google listed “bullying” and “harassment” as the reasons for the worker firings. However, No Tech for Apartheid allege their protests were peaceful, and claim the workers themselves feel bullied by Google’s response.

    No Tech for Apartheid’s protest represents an increasingly loud voice within Google and Amazon opposing big tech’s cooperation with Israel. The movement’s New York protest gathered over 100 protesters on Tuesday and reportedly dozens more in Sunnyvale, California. The movement claims to have the support of “thousands of colleagues” within Google and Amazon. Organizers say they will continue protesting until the company drops Project Nimbus.

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    Maxwell Zeff

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